Damsel. fly held together. Sarah brought the plane’s nose down. Her legs were blurs on the pedals. She never knew whether her efforts saved her or the gust simply subsided. What she did know was that all the sweat on her body had turned cold.
When she was sure the ultra-ultralight-and her voice-were in full control again, she thumbed the radio’s send switch. “Hello back there,” she said. “Before, I was worrying about whether the Russians would have blankets and such for me. Now all I care about is a change of underwear.” She was surprised at how easily she could joke about what had just happened. No one, she thought, really believes in the possibility of her own death.
While Irv and Louise exclaimed tinnily through Damselfly’s speaker, Sarah shook her head, annoyed at herself. Philosophizing after the fact was all very well, but the cold sweat still coated her and her joke had almost been no joke at all, but literally true. She had believed in death, all right.
The western edge of Jotun Canyon grew closer. Sarah resisted the temptation to put on another mad burst of effort so she could reach it fifteen seconds before she would have otherwise. As in distance running, staying within herself counted. She could feel how much the one emergency had taken out of her.
At last she had land under her once more at a distance to be measured in feet rather than miles. She hit the radio switch again. The Russians could not reply on the frequency Damselfly used, but they were supposed to be listening. “Damselfly calling the Soviet rover,” she said in slow, careful Russian. “I am on your side of the canyon. Please send up a flare to show me your location.” She repeated herself several times.
All the while, she was scanning the horizon. If her navigation had been good, the flare would rise straight ahead of her. No sign of it there. No sign of it anywhere, in fact. What was-
Sarah frowned, groping for the name-Rustaveli’s problem?
There! The brilliant crimson spark hung in the air. It was north of where she had expected it; the gust over the canyon must have thrown her off worse than she thought. She twisted the control stick, working first ailerons and then rudder to go into the long, slow turn that was the best Damselfly could do.
The flare slowly sank while she approached. Now she eyed the ground instead of the sky. Motion drew her gaze. That was no Minervan down there, that was a man! “Soviet rover, I have you visually,” she said triumphantly. “Coming in to land.”
Rustaveli waved her on.
“-Snap, crackle, pop-really bad,” came out of the radio. Irv didn’t think it was haunted by Rice Krispies. What he did think was than no one had planned for Damsel. fly to be on the ground ten miles from the nearest receiver. The transmitter was not made to carry that far. No wonder the signal had static in it.
“Say again, Sarah,” he urged.
More Kellogg’s noises, then, “-not really bad,” she said.
“Broken ulna, concussion, nasty cut, maybe”-static again- “cracked ribs. But no sign of internal bleeding. He’ll get-“ Sarah’s voice vanished once more.
“Say again,” Irv repeated, and kept on repeating it until the static cleared.
“He’ll get better,” Sarah said, almost as clearly as if she were standing beside him with Louise and Pat. Grinning, Louise clasped her gloved hands over her head. as if to say, “The winnab, and still champion…”
Nodding, Irv asked the question that was even more important to him. “And how are you, hon?”
“Tired. Otherwise okay,” she answered. “I won’t try to come back today. I need the rest, and it’s too close to sunset to make me want to risk any funny winds the change from day to night might bring on over the canyon. Once was too f-“ The signal broke up again, but Irv had no trouble filling in the participial phrase he had not actually heard.
“Concur,” Louise said, over and over till Sarah acknowledged. “Wait at least till midmorning; let the air settle as much as it’s going to.”
“Will you be warm enough tonight?” Irv worried. Even when Minervan days got above freezing, nights stayed in the teens or colder.
“Plenty, thank you, Grandmother,” Sarah answered, which made Pat giggle and Irv’s ears turn hot under the flaps of his cap. “You can all be jealous of me, too, because I’m eating something that doesn’t come off our ration list. The Russians have this very nice little smoked lamb sausage called, ah-”
“Damlama khasip,” an accented male voice supplied: Shota Rustaveli.
“Nobody wants to hear about it,” Irv said. He was jealous, and so were Pat and Louise, if the lean and hungry looks on their faces meant anything. The food they had with them, which they would have eaten without much thinking about it, suddenly seemed too dull for words. Smoked lamb sausage… Irv felt his mouth watering.
Pat touched his arm and held out her hand for the radio. When he gave it to her, she said, “Sarah, I’ll bet they’re as sick of that as we are of freeze-dried waffles.”
“You are only too right,” Rustaveli said. Under the rueful amusement in his voice, the Russian-no, Georgian-sounded perfectly serious. “A pity we have no better way to meet than this Damselfly of yours. Who knows what I might do for a freeze-dried waffle?”
Louise Bragg grabbed the radio. “Sarah, did you check that one for brain damage, too?” The humans on both sides of 16tun Canyon laughed together.
“People, I think the best thing we all could do now is rest,” Sarah said. “We’ve had a long day, and another one is coming up tomorrow.” She switched from pragmatic physician to wife, but only for a moment. “Love you, Irv. Out.”
“Love you, too. Out.” Irv fired up the portable stove to melt snow and then boil water for the dinner packs he, Pat, and Louise had brought along. The chicken h la king, he knew, wasn’t really bad. But that was the trouble-he knew it. Damlama khasip-such an exotic name. What would it taste like? He was intrigued enough to wonder out loud.
“Like making love with a stranger after being married for years,” Pat suggested. She dug a spoon into her own food, tasted it, and sadly shook her head. “Married to somebody boring,” she amended. No one argued with her.
It was nearly dark by the time they were done.
“We’d better keep watch through the night,” Irv said, “or your husband, Louise, who I hope is not boring”-she stuck out her tongue at him-“will have our hides when we get back to Athena.”
He tore three scraps of paper off a notebook page, kept one, and handed the others to the women. “Write a number between one and ten,” he said, “and then show it.” He scrawled a 5 himself. Louise revealed an 8, Pat a 2. “All right, I’m odd man out; I’ll stay awake a while. Who shall I roust when I sack out?”
Pat and Louise looked at each other. After a few seconds, Pat said, “I’ll take the middle watch.”
“If you’re silly enough to volunteer, I’m silly enough to let you,” Louise said at once. “I hate sleeping in shifts.” Yawning, she unrolled her sleeping bag. “And I am beat.” She climbed in and zipped the bag up so little more than her nose showed. “G’night.”
Pat got into her sleeping bag, too. “I’ll wake you about ten, Minervan Standard Wristwatch Time,” Irv said. She nodded. Louise was already breathing slowly and regularly.
Irv walked around, wishing for a big blazing campfire; as night fell, the horizon seemed to close in on him, until the unknown lay hardly farther away than his outstretched fingertips. City boys like me don’t really realize how dark night can be without street lights and such, he thought. It took all of his will not to turn on his flashlight and wave it for the sake of something to see.
Stars would have helped, at least to ease his mind, but the clouds wrapped them away in cotton wool. Once, for a moment, he saw a wan smudge of light in the sky-one of the three little Minervan moons, though without a set of tables he had no idea which. Thicker clouds soon drifted over it and made it disappear.